Ogmento President Brian Selzer Explains Why Halo 4 King Of The Hill Is A Success

Mobile video game company Ogmento has focused on augmented reality and location-based gaming for years. The developer made the headlines earlier this month when its Halo 4 King of the Hill game, which was developed in conjunction with Mountain Dew and 7-11, became the subject of many “outraged” gamers. The app has captivated gamers to the tune of 1.2 million battles waged so far. Brian Selzer, President and Co-Founder of Ogmento, explains how location-based games are opening up new opportunities for retailers and big brands like Halo and the NBA in this exclusive interview.

How did Ogmento get into the location-based business?

Ogmento was founded to become the first mobile augmented reality games company. With state-of-the-art computer vision technology, our mission has been to turn the world itself into a gaming experience by mixing reality with virtual reality. The company inherently evolved into a location-based games company as the key role of our game experiences were triggered by the people, places, and things around the player. We set out to build social games relevant to location; games that actually “see” and interact with the world, and make everything that surrounds the player fun and rewarding. As it turned out, the location aspects of our games became a dominant feature.

How have you integrated augmented reality into the games you've created?

With our very first game in 2010, Paranormal Activity: Sanctuary, we placed virtual ghosts into the real world through a live camera feed. In addition, we had players sketch out symbols to give their spells a power boost. When viewed through their camera feed, the 2D drawing came alive as a 3D animation. Soon after we made a game with Dos XX that had us create a ring toss game where players would toss virtual rings in their camera feed onto a real bottle of Dos XX. The digital rings would occlude around the neck of the beer bottle on scoring, or bounce off the sides of the bottle when missed, so the illusion of blending physical with virtual reality was very effective. Finally, our current Halo 4 game allows the player to instantly reload supplies by viewing a bottle of Mountain Dew or a bag of Doritos.

Future projects from Ogmento are moving more into the world of SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping), which means we have the ability to place digital game characters into the world, and they will look and feel like they belong. A new world of game play is opened up with this technology, and 2013 is likely going to be a banner year for this type of AR.

There was a lot of controversy in the gaming press around the Halo 4 King of the Hill mobile game. Can you talk about how that game is performing?

The game is performing beyond our collective expectations. Most of the controversy was from people who just didn't want to see Halo as part of any co-marketing campaign, and passed judgment on our game before even playing it. That said, once someone engaged with the app, they really jumped in. In one month we've had over 1.2 million battles waged on over 7,500 7-Eleven locations (hills). Just as impressive is that we are at a 99% attachment rate for players who visited a 7-Eleven and who then also engaged with a Dew and Doritos product.

The game has been out for a while now. What do you find interesting about who's playing and that they're still playing now?

What has been encouraging to us has been the level of engagement from the players over a long period of time. On average, they are playing the game three times a day since we launched. Keep in mind, the game was meant to be light, but the player competitions over controlling the virtual hills at 7-Eleven have kept the game relevant for much longer than it was initially intended.

Halo 4 is doing very well online on Xbox 360, how much crossover are you seeing with gamers getting away from their console and playing Halo on mobile devices?

King of the Hill is more of a supporting game/app than something that is meant to pull them away. This means that the game is extending the Halo experience while the player is on the go.

How do you feel this game is impacting 7-Eleven?

The game is not only driving an incremental amount of people to their stores, but it has them interacting with multiple products while they are there. These are not just simply ad impressions, but actual deep player engagements with these brands. This type of game creates a motivation for someone to visit their store, and then keep them coming back to defend it from other players. For 7-Eleven (and Xbox, Dew and Doritos), this is a big win in terms of impressional value.

Additionally, our proprietary computer vision technology is also helping make this a rewarding experience from the user perspective. The time it takes for the game to "see" and "recognize" the Dew bottle and Doritos bag is almost instant. The technology is tracking at a 98% user success rate. The players want the technology to enable the experience, not restrict it, and we are thrilled ours is doing so well in the field. For 7-Eleven, they want this to be a positive experience, not a frustrating one, and with that we solidly delivered.

What does this game show to other retailers and partners when it comes to the power of location-based games?

This shows that a good location based game can have a dramatic impact in changing as well as dictating consumer behavior. For a retailer, it can drive traffic to a store location. For a consumer product, it can increase frequency of consumption. A game like ours can compel a consumer to visit their store over a competitor's location, and do it more often then they would usually do on their own. Once there, we can make sure the player actually interacts with the product, not just "check in.” This changes the dynamic of how retailers and CPG companies can reach consumers on both a local and global basis.

Can you talk about your NBA partnership and how you're incorporating location-based gaming with those titles?

NBA: King of the Court 2 is a follow up to last year's successful location based game. The game places virtual courts in real world locations where players battle over control of their neighborhoods, cities, and eventually the world. Each court covers a specific area in the world, and as a player obtains the high score and becomes the King, they can compete for bigger courts where the competition gets more intense. We are also bringing back our popular "Super Courts" that include real world partners and retailers offering up prizes, discounts and more for those players who play on them.

What does the NBA brand bring to the table in the crowded mobile gaming space?

The NBA brings instant recognition and credibility to the game. For a small game developer like ourselves, it allows for a level of awareness that we wouldn't be able to achieve on our own. They have allowed us to work with their corporate partners to bring additional features and offers into our game through sponsored "Super Courts".

How do you see your NBA franchise expanding through mobile downloads and offerings?

A game such as NBA: King of the Court 2 has many avenues to expand and grow. For example, the next update includes items like "goofballs" that give fun abilities to the balls being shot, and courts that players can customize. During the course of the season we will be expanding the amount of cities in the single player mode, as well as adding in Super Courts designed by NBA players.

I've been covering the video game space for 20 years for outlets like The Washington Post, Reuters, CNET, AOL, Wired Magazine, Yahoo!, Entertainment Weekly, NBC, Variety, Maxim, EGM, and ESPN. I serve as EIC of GamerHub.tv and co-founder of GamerHub Content Network, a video ...